On December 1, 2017, the Mass Transportation Authority Transit Center on Harrison Street in downtown Flint turned from a place of routine arrivals into a crime scene when gunfire erupted inside the terminal. Clevis Bassett, 31, a Black man, was shot and later died from his injuries at Hurley Medical Center.
Investigators said the shooting happened on a Friday night inside the station, just before 9 p.m., and in the first hours afterward there were no immediate arrests announced.
As officers worked the scene and the terminal’s operations were disrupted, police also described a suspect only in broad strokes at first, while the city waited for a name and a motive to surface.
Court records later laid out what led to the confrontation: a dispute tied to bus passes inside the MTA station, escalating from words to physical shoves as Bassett forced the other man toward the exit. Surveillance footage captured the crucial seconds—after being pushed out of the building, the shooter drew a gun and fired five times toward Bassett. In a police interview the next day, Eric Paul Wilson admitted he shot and killed Bassett, but claimed he acted in self-defense, saying he believed Bassett was reaching for a gun.
As the case moved forward, the early uncertainty hardened into a prosecution. Police publicly identified Wilson as the suspect being held in the Genesee County Jail in connection with Bassett’s death, and prosecutors initially charged him with first-degree premeditated murder. The case ultimately went through two jury trials, and the second ended with Wilson convicted of the lesser included offense of second-degree murder, along with discharging a firearm in a building causing death, carrying a concealed weapon, and felony-firearm.
At trial, witnesses who knew Bassett testified that he was not known to carry a gun, and eyewitnesses at the station said they did not see him armed that day; another man who rendered aid testified that after tearing away Bassett’s shirt he saw no gun on him. Wilson’s theory suggested that if property could disappear in the chaos, a gun might have been removed too, but jurors rejected that possibility and the self-defense claim. On appeal, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions and the prison terms imposed, and Michigan Department of Corrections records list Wilson as incarcerated for those convictions with an earliest release date in 2043.
